Writer's vision is $1m gift to music

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Barbara Blackman scoffs at the popular belief that the blind
have a greater affinity for music than the sighted.

"Most of the blind people I know prefer watching football," she
says with a snort.

"How they do that I don't know. They also like playing chess
over the telephone without a board. And the clever blind ones play
the stock exchange."

The 76-year-old writer says her lifelong passion for music has
more to do with the way it underscores and makes every life
experience richer, rather than any solace it is popularly imagined
to provide the sightless.

Who needs to buy things when you can buy experiences, asks the
elegant author, the former wife of the artist Charles Blackman. And
what better and richer experience can you purchase than music?

"My life is parched, dried out, if I don't have music in it,"
she said yesterday. "My first thought in the morning is what music
will I play now?"

In recognition of her passion, and as part of a wider mission to
promote new Australian classical works and develop audiences,
Blackman yesterday bequeathed $250,000 - part of a $1 million gift
she is providing to Australian classical music - to the Australian
Chamber Orchestra.

Flanked by a grateful Richard Tognetti, the head of the
orchestra, Blackman paid tribute to his leadership of the ensemble,
which celebrates its 30th anniversary.. Part of the money will go
towards commissioning a work by the Australian composer Roger
Smalley, who will unveil it in a performance with the

orchestra next year.

The $250,000 donation will go into a new fund set up by the
orchestra that aims to raise at least $3 million to fund the
commissioning of works and new collaborations, and developing young
Australian artists.

Blackman is the latest in a string of high-profile benefactors
to the arts.

This year the Sydney Conservatorium of Music received a $16
million bequest from the late pastoralist George Henderson, and the
Australian Ballet was given $1 million by the retired Sydney
solicitor Kenneth Reed.